I have an appalling memory. Literally appalling, I struggle to remember what I had to breakfast never mind how to partially differentiate something, Which is why it’s so important to keep your skills up to date. Love it or hate it, lets face it, maths is important. No matter what degree/job you do, its highly likely that you will have to do some maths at some point. As I study chemistry, there’s a lot of maths!

But no worries if you are struggling with the maths in chemistry! ChemSoc have set up maths revision sessions, and it’s made even more helpful by the fact that the people helping you will have literally just sat the exams a few months ago themselves.

But it’s not just maths that’s important, it’s also your literacy skills. For me, I never ever practice my reading skills, and constantly use my dyslexia as an excuse for me being rubbish a reading. But find it difficult or not, it’s an extremely important skill. The ability to proof read is important when you are checking your CV, and grammar used could be the difference between you getting the placement or not.

Having a language is also something that can set you apart from other candidates, personally I’m embarrassed at the number of people in our country who speak another language relative to other countries. There’s no reason we can’t- it’s just because English is universal so we have become lazy. I wish that I had kept up my French from when I was younger- it would definitely help job applications.

Stick with it, these skills may be boring, but a bit of a refresher now and again will definitely put you in good stead for your degree/ future careers.

About Katie

Hello, my name is Katie and I am a final year Chemistry student (yes, can't quite believe it myself!) I will be blogging about what I get up to in the Chemistry department and how to balance workload with sport.
When not in lectures, even though it does seem like we spend all our time in them... I'll be either in the gym/ out at Mosh/O2 spending money on countless VKs (obviously tropical/ orange as green VKs are horrid!)
I am also both dyslexic and dyspraxic, so will give an insight on what it's like and what you can do if you too have been diagnosed with a specific "learning difficulty" of similar nature.